11 Powerful Hacks to Boost your Organic Click Through Rates (CTR)

If the organic Click-through rate impacts Google’s organic search rankings, how can we boost CTR? In this blog, you will understand what is CTR, how it impacts your website and ways to boost CTR from SEO perspective.

What is CTR?

It is the ratio of how often people who see your link end up clicking it. CTR can be used to measure how well your keywords and ads are performing.

Mathematically speaking, CTR is equal to the number of clicks that your link receives divided by the number of times your link is shown: clicks/impressions = CTR. For instance, if you had 10 clicks and 1000 impressions, then your CTR would be 1%.

Each of your keywords has their own CTRs that can be seen in your account.

Relevance of CTR

By now, you have understood the concept of CTR but what does it indicate? A high CTR is a good indication that users find your links useful and relevant. CTR also contributes to your Quality Score which can affect your blog position.

CTR can be used to gauge which keywords are successful for you which and which could be improved.

People usually get stuck on competing theories, Google Patents, and Details & semantics. To confuse people, even more, Google has not yet disclosed about the secrets of their algorithm. Learning the concepts of SEO untangles a lot of misunderstanding.

11 Hacks to Boost CTR (Click Through Rates)

For that matter, here’s an infographic that explores 11 brilliant hacks to boost your organic click through rates:

Hack #1: Identify your Lowest CTR Content

When we say identify your lowest CTR content, it means you have to collect the data and segregate the highest performers from the lowest ones. For this, you have to download Search Analytics data from Google Search Console. The data should include impressions, clicks, position, and CTR.

Impressions: The number of times your link has been reflected on the page.

Clicks: The number of times your link has been clicked.

Position: The rank of your ad or link on Google’s search result pages.

CTR: Clicks/Impressions is the Click through rate.

After collecting the data, you have to plot organic search CTR vs Organic ranking in Excel. To that, apply an exponential average curve. You have to focus on the keywords that are falling below the average curve. They are the ones that need to be improved. Those above the average curve line are performing well. DON’T MESS UP with them.

Hack #2: Say NO to ‘Keyword Heavy’ Title Tags

Writing good page titles is an art. The title tag is the first thing that a user sees. Therefore, it is important to make it catchy. For creating a good title, you must abide by the following goals:

Help you rank for a keyword

Make the user want to click to your page

Making boring title tags like ‘Digital Marketing Concepts’ or ‘Changing Nature of Digital Marketing’ will not fetch you clicks. Rather you should spice up your titles. For instance, use ‘How Digital Marketing Will Affect You?’

Hack #3: Emotional Titles

We humans are largely driven by emotions. We like to click on something that sounds funny, sad, happy, or makes us curious. Therefore, using it irresistible emotional titles will change the CTR game!

Here’s an example of how we used an emotional title to evoke a response:

Hack #4: Relate With your Audience

Try to craft your headlines in a way that you relate to your targeted audience. You can choose to be:

The bearer of the bad news

The hero or the villain

The comedian

The real good friend

Hack #5: Use Numbers in Title

According to research conducted, it was found that numbered list boosts CTR by 36%. Therefore, whenever possible give your readers an idea of how many hacks, strategies, or tips you have mentioned in your blog posts.

For instance, ’10 Must Read Digital Marketing Books’ is a better title than ‘Best Digital Marketing Books you can Read’.

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Hack #6: Use this Proven Title Format

Most of the engaging posts use the following format:

The format + Emotional Hook + Content type + Your Subject = High CTR

Hack #7: Use Power Words in your Meta Description

Other than the title, users go through the meta description to have an idea of what are they going to read in your blog. Use powerful and provocative words in your meta description instead of using a plain and flat description. Using words like ‘dramatically up your LinkedIn game’ or ‘simple yet effective hacks to improve your LinkedIn profile’ could be used instead of simply using ‘Tips to improve your LinkedIn profile’

Hack #8: Use Descriptive URLs

Since users also notice URLs of the link, it is seen that descriptive URLs increases CTR by 25% than generic ones. (As per Microsoft)

Hack #9: Try Different Headlines

By trying out different headlines, I don’t mean experimenting with capitalization and punctuations. You should try different headlines experimenting with emotions. The ones which evoke a response is good to go!

Hack #10: Audition Headline Ideas via Google AdWords

You can test your final titles on Google AdWords. You can preview how your headlines will look on Desktop and mobile.

Hack #11: Test Different Headlines via Facebook Posts

Facebook is a platform where you can immediately feel the response of your titles. Try out different headlines using Facebook posts as the same emotion that makes people click on your Facebook post will make them want to click on organic search listings.

Conclusion

Running an SEO-based website or page is a task. I agree. However, exploring and implementing tricks and hacks that suit your objectives would do the wonders. Which hack are you curious to experiment with?

Sakshi is a content marketer during the day and a reader by night. She writes content sprinkled with a twisted imagination. She has done her graduation in psychology from Delhi University and has an insane love for history.

There are 4 comments

All the tips you have mentioned are necessary to run successful SEO campaign because each and everything is important in SEO.I did not read all the points somewhere else so will not hesitate to share with my friends.